


you haunt me while you live

by xylodemon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Red Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 08:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She felt a hand at the back of her head, groping fingers that bruised her neck and scalp as they twisted into her hair. <i>No, don't, don't cut my hair. Ned loves my hair.</i> Her head was yanked back, and a dagger was pressed coldly to the soft skin below her jaw, but the bite she expected did not come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you haunt me while you live

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://asoiafkinkmeme.livejournal.com/profile)[**asoiafkinkmeme**](http://asoiafkinkmeme.livejournal.com/), and this prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _AU where Jon joins Robb instead of the Watch, and he and Cat survive the Red Wedding._
> 
>  
> 
> _"I would have died, had you not saved me."_  
>  _"Yes."_  
>  _"Why did you save me?"_  
>  " _...Because Robb loved you."_

She should have suspected treachery, even with their demands for bread and salt. Walder Frey was prickly and old, proud of what little honor he had, the kind of man who nursed his grudges as a mother nursed a newborn babe, and Robb had wronged him, embarrassed him before both gods and men. Robb had offered House Frey two weddings to pay for his sins, first Edmure, and then Jon, only a legitimized bastard but still the heir to the North should the Westerling girl not be with child, but it must not have been enough to wash the taste of betrayal from Walder Frey's mouth.

Jinglebell went slack against her, collapsing like a puppet without its strings. She did not watch him fall. All she could see was Robb, staggering as he tried to keep his feet, his blue eyes and his thick auburn hair and the dark patches of blood blooming on his doublet. She clawed at her face and throat, her fingernails slicing into skin that already seemed numb.

"...mad..."

She had blood on her hands, sticky and wet, running over her wrists in tiny rivulets.

"...lost her wits..."

Laughter bubbled in her throat.

"...make and end..."

She felt a hand at the back of her head, groping fingers that bruised her neck and scalp as they twisted into her hair. _No, don't, don't cut my hair. Ned loves my hair._ Her head was yanked back, and a dagger was pressed coldly to the soft skin below her jaw, but the bite she expected did not come. She was jerked to one side instead, pulled back by a strong hand gripping her arm like iron, and then Ned was standing beside her, looking as young as he had the day they were wed, his hair longer than she remembered and his face thinner, snarling at her attacker with a meat knife in his hand.

_No. Ned is dead. I know Ned is dead. The Imp sent me his bones._

Jon darted ahead of her, slashing wildly with the meat knife, and the Frey who'd meant to kill her reeled back into a table, then slumped to the floor, a red gash opening his neck from his ear to his chin. Another Frey reared up to replace him, shorter and fatter than the last; Jon stabbed him twice in the belly before turning back to tug her forward by the arm, his bloody fingers tearing at her sleeve.

"You must walk, Lady Stark." His voice was thin and rough, and his left arm was bristling with arrows, bleeding freely below the shoulder. "The door is not far."

Someone screamed. Walder Frey was laughing -- a dry and brittle sound, like mice chewing at old paper. Dacey Mormont was ahead of them, dragging Robb's body toward the door by the ankle, but she staggered as she walked, her hand pressed to her belly and the front of her dress stained with blood. Jon's fingers bit into her arm, urging her to keep moving. She wanted to scream, but the sound would not come out, as if her voice had frozen in the back of her throat. 

The yard was chaos, the earth churned into black-red mud between the campfires; Northerners fought Freys in desperate pockets and handfuls. Jon pushed the meat knife into her hands, then took up a sword from the corpse of a Glover, his red and silver cloak fluttering across his face. Dacey collapsed a few paces in front of them, clawing at the ground as she struggled back up to her knees. Jon's wolf bounded up on silent paws, his white fur burnished silver by the moonlight, his eyes red as he nosed at Robb's cold, stiff body.

"To me!" Jon shouted, stepping back as his wolf lunged at a man in the red and pink of House Bolton. "The king is killed! The king is killed! House Stark and Winterfell to me!"

A hand pulled at Catelyn's skirts; it was Dacey, her face pale and her fingers dark with mud. Blood foamed at the corners of her mouth. Jon's wolf leapt over her, turning in the air as a Frey lurched toward Catelyn with an axe in his hand. He closed his huge jaws around the man's shin, then savaged the man's throat, his teeth tearing at muscle and flesh with a cold, wet sound that twisted Catelyn's stomach into knots. She crouched down beside Robb, brushing her fingers through his blood-soaked hair. 

"House Stark! House Stark and Winterfell! House Stark and Winterfell!"

A Bolton man slid between Catelyn and Jon, his fingers white-knuckled on the tiller of a crossbow, and Catelyn found her voice, screaming as she stabbed at him, her tiny knife catching the crease of his elbow. He took a startled step back, then straightened, growling _bitch_ under his breath as he set his feet. Jon turned suddenly, and a sword blade burst through the Bolton's chest, red and sharp. He fell to his knees with a grunt, then pitched over, his face landing a pace from Robb's feet.

"We cannot hold here," Jon said, speaking to an Umber whose face Catelyn couldn't see for the shadows. "We make for the road, and Riverrun."

"What about the king?"

"Bring him. Lady Stark may find some comfort in his bones."

 _Bones._ Catelyn could taste bread and salt on the flat of her tongue. _The Imp gave me Ned's bones, and now the Late Lord Frey has given me Robb's._

Jon helped her to her feet, holding her arm firmly when she tried to pull away and return to Robb's body. The moon was high and full above her head, a reminder of the Mother in the same way the Maiden recalled the sun. She was cold, so cold. She took a slow, deep breath and forced herself to look at Ned's son.

"I would have died," she said, her voice as rusty as an old hinge. The cuts on her face were starting to sting. "I would have died, had you not saved me."

"Yes."

Catelyn thought of the day she had arrived at Winterfell, and the grimly determined expression on Ned's face as he told her he'd fathered a bastard during Robert's war. Jon had been sleeping the first time Catelyn saw him, his head dusted with dark hair and a blanket clutched in his tiny hands. 

"Why did you save me?"

Jon frowned, cocking his head to the side. He looked so much like Ned that a hollow ache carved into the space beneath Catelyn's ribs.

"Because Robb loved you," he said quietly.

He called his wolf to heel with a click of his tongue, then led her across the yard, his grey and white cloak dancing as he moved.


End file.
